Title: Skies Above

Developer: Hungry Dingo

Publisher: Flynn’s Arcade

Available On: April 17th 2025

Platforms: PC and Nintendo Switch

Reviewed On: Nintendo Switch  

Introduction

Skies Above is a pixel art fast-paced action game with plenty of upgrades.

Synopsis

Ride on the back of a leviathan above the clouds as you attempt to save it from an onslaught of man-made robots, who wish the sky whale harm.

Analysis

You are a human from a rebel faction, who has dedicated your time to help save the leviathan whales who once called earth a haven. When these majestic leviathan whales were rediscovered by greedy humans, instead of welcoming them, they tried to exploit them for resources. They built a robot army to eliminate the whales and it’s up to the resistance to protect them as they try to escape.

The gameplay

Skies Above follows the story of leviathans who are under attack by robots constructed by greedy humans wanting more. As a rebel your duty is to protect these creatures from the harm these humans and robots are procuring. The game centers around two main areas the rebel base camp and above the clouds. Each area focuses on the concept of preparation and defense.

The rebel camp starts off simple with an area in which you can upgrade various attributes. The first three that are available to upgrade are life, speed, and greed. Which life allows to expand the leviathan’s overall health, speed helps your whale get further into the flight, and greed improves the amount of currency you can obtain. More options are unlocked as you proceed in the upgrades.

The next step to continue upgrading your fight against the robots is to take your fight to the skies. You begin on the back of the whale and randomly spherical shaped robots will appear and your job is to jump up and explode them as you jump from one to the other to destroy them. You need to aim to the next one to string together the takedown. You sometimes overshoot and to recover you can recenter on the whale. Once you get your bearings you can continue your assault. Besides the spherical robots you have some that syphon its energy on its back, some that have bombs, lasers, and other types of weaponry.

As you ride the whales back you can reach points where you can receive extra money or parts for robot upgrades that can help you in your fight. You can also destroy gold rocks to give you bonus money and take out rocks that hold spirit whales which can help protect the leviathan as you gain more of them. The upgrades can really help in your fight. You will fight until your sky beasts life depletes to zero and automatically return to the rebel camp to continue upgrading for the next run.

Other things that I had unlocked as I continued the game was upgrading a tree with gem-like objects, that once reached, unlocks a new portion in your camp. I unlocked sky fishing which allows you to fish and feed your whale friend. It unlocks a list of goals to do within the fights to unlock more gems to unlock even more base camp upgrades. You also have someone who helps upgrade your robot with various statistics and someone that wants the spirit whales to help upgrade your shield during the fights. Overall, there seems to be plenty to do within this loop of prepare and fight.   

Final Score

Skies Above takes a fast-paced defense game and pairs it with a nice, looped upgrading mechanic that creates a fun dynamic of gameplay. The pixel art is graphically beautiful, making it visually striking. The heavy rock music is paired well with the adrenaline laced sky fights and the more serene light musical tones for the upgrading between the carnage is a nice offset. All around I enjoyed a lot about Skies Above.

I did have one unexpected glitch that caused me to have to reset the game a few times within the rebel basecamp. It seemed to occur while jumping by the tree while trying to ride the spirit whales. Somehow my character disappeared assuming behind the background and the camera would follow. I could not get out of this and eventually my character would no longer move, and I would need to reset the game. This happened a few times but not continuously, leaving me to think it had to be in the right scenario to induce it. Other than this I did not notice anything else like this.

Though branded as an arcade game this game feels a lot more in depth than most under this genre. It feels really fleshed out and I enjoyed my time in this game and greatly appreciate the gameplay, music, strategy, and storytelling Skies Above offers its players. If you want a great fast-paced whale-surfing arcade pixel, this one is for you.

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Shane Kelley is a Senior writer for Boss Rush Network, as well as a writer for Another Zelda Podcast. His favorite game is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. You can find him on X or Bluesky to talk video games, Marvel, cribbage, and axe throwing.

Images: taken by author